Brazil does not see U.S. backing OECD bid on Bolsonaro trip: source

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro listens to Paraguay's President Mario Abdo during a meeting at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil does not expect the U.S. government to announce support for its bid to join a club of the world’s advanced economies when its President Jair Bolsonaro visits Washington next week, a senior member of his economic team told Reuters on Friday.

Brazil, the world’s eighth-largest economy, applied in 2017 to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a forum of three dozen advanced economies that includes Mexico, Chile and Colombia.

The Brazilian official, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said that Brazil hopes to show Washington it has become a fully fledged market economy and win U.S. backing to enter the OECD in a process that could take another three years.

“The purpose of this visit is in part to show that Brazil is a market economy that is free of ideology and wants to use the United States as the model for its development,” the Brazilian official said. “This is linked to joining the OECD, which is important for our country’s future.”

OECD membership is seen as a stamp of approval that would boost investor confidence in a country’s government and economy.

Yet Brazil’s OECD bid has run into broad U.S. opposition to expanding multilateral bodies such as the OECD, another person with knowledge of the matter said.

Bolsonaro will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday and OECD membership will be on the agenda, the sources said.

The Brazilian government had hoped that the ideological affinity between Trump and Bolsonaro, who has been called the “tropical Trump” for the aggressive tone of his new right-wing government, would help to win U.S. support for the OECD bid.

However, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is seen as the biggest source of resistance to the idea. Trump has also already announced his support for Argentina joining the OECD, hurting the chances of another such endorsement.

Reporting by Marcela Ayres; Additional reporting and writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by James Dalgleish